The Police Signal Box: a 100 Year History the Police Signal Box: a 100 Year History

Return to BlueBox The Police Signal Box: A 100 Year History The Police Signal Box: A 100 Year History Robert W. Stewart Signal Processing Division Dept of Electronic and Electrical Engineering University of Strathclyde Glasgow G1 1XW June 1994 Abstract Within a few years of the invention of the telephone, many police forces around the world immediately embraced this new technology in the ever increasing fight against crime. By the turn of the 19th century police telephone boxes were appearing on the streets of cities for the use of officers and the general public. Within 40 years the UK had thousands of police boxes and telephone pillars in both cities and rural areas. Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Sheffield and London had a cumulative total of thousands of boxes. By the 1970s, however, the advances in telecommunications resulted in the signal boxes being surplus to police requirements and most have were removed. Notable exceptions are a few of the familiar “bluebox” style in Glasgow, and some of a different design in Edinburgh. an June 1993 the impending removal of the last 11 boxes in Glasgow was announced by Strathclyde Police and Fire Committee. In this paper we look at the history of police telephonic communications, and in particular at the creation of Glasgow's network, which was one of largest in the UK, with 323 on-street police signal boxes. The “bluebox” opposite the University of Strathclyde’s Barony Hall. This box was moved to the Summerlee Museum in 1994. 1 Return to BlueBox The Police Signal Box: A 100 Year History 1. Introduction For more than 100 years efficient telecommunications has been essential for the management of an effective and responsive police force. Within 4 years of the invention of the telephone the City of Glasgow Police had lines installed to allow inter-station spoken communication. In 1891 the world's first police signal box was patented by a Glasgow fireman [19], and the installation of a network of on street police boxes was undertaken in Glasgow; these boxes would serve the city for more than 40 years. At the beginning of the 1930s many British police forces, including Glasgow, adopted the new standardised General Post Office Police Signal Box system [8]. In major cities and towns all over the UK, networks of 9 feet high boxes of the design shown in Figure 1 were Figure 1: A young lady using a Glasgow Police Box in 1931. installed on the streets. The purpose of the boxes was to improve the communications within the police, and also to provide a facility for the general public to access a telephone in order to contact the police, fire or ambulance service in an emergency. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s the police boxes provided an invaluable service to the British public. Although police boxes of varying designs were adopted by cities all over the world the blue British GPO police signal box achieved worldwide fame and became instantly recognisable as a result of its use as a time and space travelling machine (the TARDIS) by the BBC television character, Dr. Who! As police radios became portable and convenient to use in the 1950s and 1960s the use of the signal boxes for police communication was starting to decrease. The introduction of the 999 system in the late 1930s, and the increasing number of public telephone kiosks and private telephones resulted in the signal boxes no longer representing the only way for the general public to remotely contact the police. Therefore during the 1970s most of the boxes in the UK were demolished as surplus to police requirements. In Glasgow the removal of its vast network of 323 boxes was rather slower; the ex-Assistant Chief Constable Willie Ratcliffe recalls his decision in the 1950s and 1960s [15] that the boxes were still a rather useful place to keep police overcoats in case of inclement weather! With modern radio communication and cellular telephones it is perhaps difficult for today's society to recall or conceive a time when an emergency situation had to be dealt with by running to the nearest police box, calling the police using the speakerphone, and waiting for the local police officer on his beat to respond to the red light on top of the box. 2. Early Police Telecommunications In September of 1829 the Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel (later to be Prime Minister in 1834-5, and 1841- 2 Return to BlueBox The Police Signal Box: A 100 Year History 6) started a formal group of men policing the streets from the lawlessness of London. The only available communication for the first police officers w as a loud shout or a whistle. But before the turn of the 19th century the inventions of telegraph, followed by the telephone, radio communications and the teletypewriter would soon offer new forms of communication that the police would quickly embrace to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. 2.1 From Telegraph to Telephone 1837-1876 In 1876 the native Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the USA. The telephone was a major advancement on the telegraph system invented in 1837 by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, and further developed by Samuel Morse. (The purpose of the telegraph was to transmit written messages by wire using a standardised code.) The telegraph system was already widely used by the many private railway companies in the UK, when the telephone invention arrived in the UK. In 1870 Parliament transferred the operation of telegraphs from the many small private companies to the Post Office. By the mid-1880s a significant nationwide network of telegraphs had been installed in British Post Offices and around 40 million telegraphs a year were being sent. One of the first uses of telegraph by the emergency services was in Boston in 1851 when telegraph was set up to allow fire stations to communicate and coordinate their activities. In 1878 the Glasgow Fire Brigade (then under the jurisdiction of the police) installed what is reported to be the first ever street fire alarm system consisting of 82 alarm boxes distributed throughout the city [20]. The action of pulling the box handle used telegraphy to send a signal to the fire station where the source location was identified, and a fire engine was sent in response. On arrival at the scene the fireman could plug in a morse style unit to communicate with the fire station. By the end of the century a portable phone could be plugged into the alarm boxes. It is reported that when Bell's telephone invention arrived in Britain the General Post Office was somewhat ambivalent given their large investment in telegraph. After investigating the new invention the then Engineer-in-Chief, Richard Cullen, told a representative of Bell, that ‘’the possible use of the telephone appears to be even more limited that I first supposed it’’. Therefore in 1879 it was a private company and not the General Post Office that established the first public telephone service in Britain with just eight subscribers to an exchange in London! By the late 19th century the larger private telephone companies had amalgamated to form the National Telephone Company which remained in control of the country's telecommunications until 1911 when the General Post Office took over the 1565 exchanges that had been established nationwide [17]. 2.2 The First Police Telephones - 1877 Within a year of its invention, the first police telephones were installed in Albany, New York, USA in 1877. Five telephones were used to communicate from the Mayor's office to the 5 city districts [5]. Other American cities such as Detroit and Chicago also installed a few inter-station telephones in 1880. By 1883, the Gamewell Company in the USA, had developed a call box (or post) that could be used by both the police and the public and was sufficiently robust to be placed on the public streets. In 1883 in Washington, D.C. the world's first call boxes were connected to the fire department and later to the police headquarters and one year later in 1884, Chicago and Detroit had both installed call box systems. In 1883 the Boston Police decided against adopting a call box system. Aside from the installation expense of $100,000, and the yearly running costs of more than $10,000 it was the opinion of the city’s aldermen that Boston had an adequate police force compared to “wicked Chicago”, where a system was already in operation. By 1885 however the Board of Police in Boston decided to test out a signal system using the Gamewell system, and also another from a local company called the Municipal Signal Company of Boston. By 1886 the systems were considered to be a resounding success, and the city continued to expand the network. Today in both Washington and Boston, many street corners in the old parts of the cities still have original call boxes standing, although not operational. 2.3 The Chicago Police Signal Box System Within a few years of its invention, the Chicago Police installed a network of on-street call boxes. The were 3 Return to BlueBox The Police Signal Box: A 100 Year History Figure 2: The Chicago Police responding to a call for help from a police signal box (pre-1900). two main objectives for the system: (1) to increase the rapidity and efficiency of the police assistance in cases of urgency, and (2) to reduce the number of patrolmen thus reducing overall police operational costs. As well as on-street call boxes, the Chicago Police adopted the use of sentry style boxes large enough for a police officer and a prisoner [21].

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